


Fractured

by ficsiwontadmitto



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:32:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4176552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficsiwontadmitto/pseuds/ficsiwontadmitto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a smut scene. The Herald can't stay well enough away from the Commander. I'm pretty sure this is aggressively terrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tomorrow, she tells herself. She’ll tell him tomorrow.

So, the Herald stands before the War Table, her hands clasped behind her back, her fingers twitching along the bracelets her mother gave her long ago, spinning spinning. The smoothness inside the band twists around her skin with little friction. 

By the movement of the sun through the slit windows of the Chantry walls, she knows the hours pass. The markers on the table move. She keeps quiet, because the four, Leliana, Cassandra, Josephine, and Cullen, are competent, tested. And what of her? Only in the wrong place, the wrong time. And she can’t even recall the details. She cannot absolve herself of the sins others hurl as accusations. 

“To the Storm Coast, then.” The corners of Cassandra’s mouth turn downward. “Unless the Herald objects?”

She shakes her head, maybe too vigorously. “No, of course not.” On what grounds could she possibly object? ‘I’m terribly sorry, Seeker Pentaghast, only I was hoping tomorrow the cat would no longer have my tongue.’

“Then it is settled.” Cullen nods, ever so slightly, his large hand at the pommel of his sheathed blade. The Herald notices how he presses against the rounded tip with the palm of his hand, almost hard enough to break the bindings on his belt. But his hand withdraws just in time. And so does he, stepping from the room, the sound of his boots striking against the stone.

\--

When we return, she tells herself. She’ll tell him when they return from the Coast.

There are a great many lies she tells herself in the dark as she lies alone in bed. Some of them are pretty, some of them are sweet. All of them make the truth more wretched.

She tells herself one day she will be pretty, though she will always be plain. That she will be clever, though really she is only attentive. And that the handsome Commander who nervously tugs at the loose threads of his coat will look her in the eye. He will look her in the eye and she may catch her breath, then lose it all over again. 

Finding sleep is impossible. She tosses and turns in her sheets, coarser than the ones she left behind at Ostwick. Her parents send letters in neat handwriting, the words all lined up. How wonderful, they write, that she has been chosen by Andraste. 

Wonderful indeed. And when the Mark at her hand sputters, glows, novas, and fades, she almost feels as if she belongs here. Chosen by Andraste or not, she chooses the Inquisition. 

\--

Weeks later, they return from the Storm Coast. She feels stronger, more worthy of the title, ‘Herald.’ It rolls around in her mouth like a piece of candy, dissolving until their is nothing left but honeyed sweetness on her tongue. The last remnants of that confidence evaporates at the moment she most needs it. 

Cullen greets them at the gates to Haven, offering a hand to her first. She reaches for it, her riding gloves coming between their skin. Still, he won’t meet her eyes. What she has done to offend him, she is unsure. A glance too long, perhaps, months ago when the Inquisition began. When she first started at the sight of him, when her palms went dry.

“Herald,” it is an ill replacement for her name. If only once, just once, to hear it from him.

The same hand he extends to Cassandra, only this time he does not turn away. He holds her gaze; he smiles. The Commander and the Seeker walk together towards the training grounds, their mouths continually in motion. The Herald is left alone, her boots sinking into the thawing earth. She wipes at her face. There’s nothing there.

\--

In the dim light of the darkened Chantry, she asks Andraste for strength, for courage, for wisdom. A selfish piece of her wishes to ask for beauty as well. Not as an end in itself, but to wrangle a shard of happiness and keep it close. She would promise the blessed Andraste to ask for nothing more. Only a bit of something to soothe her ache, her loneliness. 

Intending to return to her quarters, the little house set aside for her, with a warm hearth and thick blankets, she keeps her candle lit. It burns so bright as she walks the length of the Chantry. Just outside the walls, the candle flickers out with the sudden wind of the door slamming shut. Like this, she will wake all of Haven.

Her journey back must be completed in the semi-darkness. There is just enough snow left in what was once huge, pillowy piles to catch the light from the waning moon. And so, her steps are not entirely unsure. 

In the darkness, their paths cross. And that word, a title, not her name, falls from his lips. “Herald.”

“Commander.” The muscles in her chest feel impossibly tight. Like her breath will shatter her right then and there. 

His head inclines, just a touch. “It is late.”

“I was asking Andraste for forgiveness.” 

“Ah, yes,” his posture straightens, “of course.”

She smiles, a faint one. Her fingers press to her lips, hiding her joy in a simple thing. Cullen holds her eyes.

“May I walk you to your quarters?”

Just as quickly she frowns. “I should not be a bother.”

“No bother.” His palm falls into place at his pommel. Her hands cross behind her back.

She wishes there were clever words she could conjure to fill the air. Instead, she listens to the sound of Cullen’s breathing in the night. 

They reach the door of the house. It is dark, the hearth cold. Cullen’s hand reaches for the door knob. She wishes she could melt through the slim cracks between the panels of wood. His body is so close; the heat of him so strong. And she can already tell her bed will be cold.

Lonely, so lonely.

Despite herself, she shivers. Cullen’s hand reaches for her, touches against her neck, her hair brushing over exposed knuckles. She worries about the whereabouts of his gloves.

What a silly, stupid thing. So silly and stupid that she laughs.

“Are you alright?” Cullen’s voice is nothing but concerned.

She wipes away her tears. “Yes, yes, quite alright. I will have to ask for forgiveness again.”

“I can’t imagine why.” His hand is still at the juncture of her neck and shoulder. 

Coming up on her toes, she presses her lips to his. The jagged outline of his scar, just barely at the edge of her perception. He kisses back with such fierceness, such force, it knocks her back through the open doorway. Throws her against the opposite wall, her fists curled in the fur of his coat. She pulls him into the abyss right after her. 

Inside her head she chants, ‘love me, love me.’

All she can render with her tongue is, “Stay.”

His leg slides between the two of hers, grinding up until she lets out a wordless gasp. Bare hands, of which a moment ago she was so concerned, stroke against the outside of her tunic, coming to cradle her breast. 

“You should send me away,” Cullen pleads. “Tell me to go.”

“Why?” she questions. Why indeed, when she has touched herself to this very image, to the thought of him between her thighs, against her skin? When she has has privately mimed the drinking of his scent. Now she has it before her. Hard and willing. She keeps her arms around his shoulders. Her lips press against the stubble at his cheek. “I want you to stay.”

He bites at her bottom lip, nipping as she speaks. Truly, it cannot be that he wishes to be sent away. His fingers are already at her breeches, working the knot their loose, producing a knot in the pit of her stomach. She is crushed by her own arousal. Her need to be someone else.

“Tell me to go,” he insists again.

“No.”

Taking her by the shoulder, Cullen turns her around. The wood of the cottage is cool against her cheek. He pulls down her breeches, inch by painstaking inch. She exhales as the fabric catches at the tops of her thighs, her legs too far spread for them to fall further. 

Cullen’s chest presses against her back, holding her in place as he slides one finger into her, long and thick. He curls it just so and thrusts. And again. And again. She tries to spread her legs and when she can’t she only thinks to ask for more. More of anything he is willing to give. But her words come out as a jumble of noise as he fucks her with a single finger.

Only now does she try to make sense of the whispers in her ear.

“I’m not the man you think I am.”

She doesn’t know what to think. But she knows she does not want this pleasure of his body over hers to end. 

The second finger stretches her, curls and completes, until she is weak-kneed and shivering. Until Cullen must hold her by her waist to keep her upright. And she seeks out his words again. 

“Don’t ask me to stay again. I cannot.” He kisses the shell of her ear. “Maker, you are so beautiful. So lovely. I want you.”

“Stay,” it is the most innocent of requests.

He turns her back around. Kisses her, though this time gentle. “They will talk.”

Her eyes drift closed. “And we cannot let them?”

Really, she wishes for him to throw her down again. To fill her up and make her burst. To leave her hips and thighs black and blue. Anything to chase the ache away, to loosen her anxiety and doubt. 

“I will come again,” he promises, “but I cannot stay.”

“Lie to me more, instead.”

It is his turn to smile. “Not a lie.” He kisses her again, a long string of them until her lungs feel utterly empty of air and full of him instead. “Not a lie.”

Her hands grip at the front of his coat, again. “Then what is the truth?”

“That I may never lie to you. I am incapable.” 

“And why is that?” she thinks herself quite coy. Really, she is only unsure, a touch terrified. 

“Many reasons. Ones that will sound like untruths, if spoken too soon.”

Her heart feels like melting snow. Too fleeting, too fragile.


	2. Chapter 2

They will say she is twice blessed. Not the Mothers who steadfastly refuse to believe she is chosen, but the believers who light their candles, ask for forgiveness, and find it in the most unassuming of places. The Herald has found her light in great ways. Bright and brilliant. It is welded to her left hand. It carries her feet through the storm on the mountain as her lips chap, break, and bleed. She forgets the fracture in her leg, dragging it along best she can. It catches in the snow, it makes her scream. But she marches with stars in her eyes. White-hot pain that will linger on her skin until the day she dies.

And then she is warm, impossibly so. The crystals on her eyelashes melt, turn to tears. She sobs against the warm-framed body that holds her close, lifts her from the ground. She cannot see, debris in her eyes in front of the stars. But she can smell him. She knows she is safe. Not like home, because home is desolate. Gone, unwelcome. Going to lick her lips, her tongue is dry. She cannot say his name. But his fingers cradling her limp neck writes a novel.

She won't die. It is enough.

When she wakes, it is with Mother Giselle by her side, a warm rag at her forehead. They have been trying to bring her body temperature up slowly. She asks for tea, but they only have a bottle of liquor. Good enough, because it is warm as it rolls down the length of her throat. At the end, she chokes a little, but it feels good to vibrate, to feel her lungs flutter like wings.

"How long was I asleep?" Done with the drink, she places her head back to the hard pillow, really just a rolled up tunic. Her voice comes out hoarse, but it sounds like her own.

Mother Giselle says nothing. Rather, she wets the cloth again, presses it to the Herald's forehead. "You should sleep, child. They are counting on your guidance. When you are well enough."

In the distance she can hear the others, Cassandra, Leliana, Josephine, Cullen. Her heart soars because they are alive, they are well. Even if they are angry, they are unarmed. Going to swing her legs over the side of the makeshift cot, her head spins. Mother Giselle stops her, assuring her that there will be time enough for that later.

But she wants the time to be now.

Later, when they all think her asleep, Cullen kneels at her bedside. He says the Chant. She holds her breath, dawdling on every word, hoping he will deviate. She is not as good as he thinks, not as kind. By the time she gathers the courage to whisper his name, he is already gone.

\--

At Skyhold they are strangers. 

Cassandra says she is now Inquisitor. Like a good girl, she hoists the sword, as tall as her, above her head. It makes her muscles strain with its dead weight. When the ceremony is over, she steals away to her quarters, burying her face in her hands, trying to catch her breath. How can they not see? How can they not see the imposter she is? Wearing another woman's skin, calling herself by another woman's name?

She does not know herself.

Calling for a servant, she orders hot water for a bath. There is no tub in which to soak, but she rubs her skin with the coarse cloth until she feels utterly raw.

"Inquisitor, Inquisitor."

She says her own title, over and over, as her wet hair slicks down her naked back.

"Inquisitor. Inquisitor." She tries to make that name her own.

When she tries to say her own name, she only chokes on it, retches until she is dry.

The knock at her door rouses her. Pushing herself to her feet, she takes only a sheet for modesty. Only a few would come to her this late. Advisors, messengers, friends. They have seen her in a worse state than this. 

It is Cullen, dressed already for bed, save for the sturdy leather shoes on his feet. His hands reach for her bare shoulders, holding her in place.

"I said I would come, and never did," he admits.

The light from the sconces catch in his eyes, turning them from amber to orange. 

"You did," she gives too much away.

Cullen furrows his brow. "No?"

"In the mountains," the words come in rain-swollen streams. "You came to my bedside. You recited the Chant."

He looks quite embarrassed that she knows. "I'll go, Inquisitor."

"Inquisitor, Inquisitor." She does not realize until it is too late that she has spoken aloud.

He clips the door closed behind them, taking her face between his hands. One thumb runs along her lip, parted. She stares straight ahead, as she is unafraid. A man like him could never frighten her. 

"Who are you?" he asks, as if he is seeing her now for the first time. As if they have not spent the last year exchanging words and half-breaths, heat between them that comes and goes with circumstance. His hand reaches for where she bunches the sheet together at her breast. He holds it in place as she breathes. She remembers to gulp down air. What a time to die?

He presses his lips to her shoulder, just where it touches her neck. His fingers follow, tracing the lines where his mouth warmed skin. 

"Please," she asks.

"Please, what?" Still he holds the sheet. 

She lets her hands drop. He holds her aloft. 

"I want you," her eyes flutter closed. She can only hope he understands. "I want you, Cullen. Do you not want me?"

His breath hitches, and for the first time she considers his anxiety as well. That they may be equal in their hesitance, their deception. Cullen's fingers twist in the fabric at her bust. Achingly, she wants him to let it fall, to pillow about her feet.

"More than anything," he assents.

Pushing against her, Cullen nonetheless keeps her covered, though he strips her with his teeth, the way he bites and tugs at her lips. The way he devours her. So desperate, so sweet.

She pulls his hands away, so the sheet might fall, so he might see her. The first time. Before they were closed off, absent. She tangles her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer, forcing the contact. His hands come to settle at the small of her back. She wants them everywhere, anywhere else.

But he disengages, one last prayer against her mouth. "I'm sorry, Inquisitor, I'm sorry."

"You're not the man I think you are?" 

Cullen shakes his head. "I do not know who I am. Not any longer."

"I don't care." She is steadfast in her determination, in the way she guides his hands to her hips, across the flat plane of her stomach, and to her sex. 

His fingers take up the work, rubbing against her, letting her mewls dictate his pace. She teaches him the contours of her, this time. Whispering "Yes, yes," as she comes undone. Pulsing against his digits, her head clears as his undoubtedly fogs.

He pins her to the floor, cold stone against her back. His legs slot between her thighs, hands locking against her wrists. Against her leg she can feel the heat of his cock. It stiffens; he whimpers some sort of frustration in her ear. That she is so beautiful, that he is not worthy.

Grinding against her, he swells. She wants and wants, but he does not give. With the sharpness of her whine, his eyes fly open, catching hers with a recklessness. Like he remembers something he has tried to forget. Suppression suddenly come to light.

"I cannot stay."

She touches against his cheek before he flees, his boots hard against the floor as he vanishes. The stone supports her; she feels too unwell to stand. Instead she plays with her fingertips against her chest, ghosting patterns she wishes he would haunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure this still isn't very good. But here, I guess, have some more.


End file.
